Vishwagurudom, via Macaulay

The yearning to become Vishwaguru, a rechristened desire to be the world leader in the knowledge economy, may appear at odds with the contention that the nation must have Foreign Higher Education Providers (FHEP) to attain excellence in higher education or to stop a large number of students from going abroad for studies.

Yet, the awakening of the Indian society in the 19th century that led to the freedom movement and freeing people from the colonial mindset may be attributed to a great extent to those who studied and trained abroad in foreign higher education institutions and came back with the ideas of liberty and liberalism that were gaining ground there at the time.

Also, the rich and rigorous debate on decolonising knowledge and its production and distribution centres -- universities and schools -- and the debates about westernisation and modernisation of knowledge and people, the rift between universal and indigenous understanding and culture, and the response to each other, gathered around the iconography of Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Macaulay, the then president of the General Committee of Public Instruction (GCPI), argued in his ‘Minute on Indian Education’ in 1835 for English to be the medium of instruction and teaching western sciences to Indians, which he thought were much superior to Indian knowledge and languages.

He derided that “a single shelf of a good European library is worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.” He believed that it was no exaggeration to say that “all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England.”

It was the infamous ‘Minute’ that charted the colonial effort to ‘educate’ Indians. Consequently, numerous schools, colleges and universities were opened during British rule, which replaced the indigenous centres of education, methods of knowledge construction and pedagogy.

These institutions were meant to produce men (and women) who would be English by the mind but brown by their skin, derided as tody baccha during the freedom struggle and Macaulayputra post-independence.

The New Education Policy (NEP 2020) seems to believe that this mindset has been holding India back in its path of progress and seeks to reverse this onslaught on Indian minds and envisions producing ‘Sanskritised’ people, irrespective of the colour of their skin but with due respect to caste and gender in hushed tones.

Global economic compulsion has, however, compelled the government to pitch for the internationalisation of higher education. It is to this end that the nation is now roping in FHEPs, mainly foreign universities. Promoted as a win-win strategy, it is expected to provide Indians ‘foreign’ degrees with ‘quality’ education at a lower price, without having to cross the seas in search of the same.

The higher education system in India is quite heterogeneous already, and adding yet another layer of heterogeneity must not be an issue. The worry is that it must not absolve the nation from the responsibility of improving the quality of Desi or Domestic Higher Education Providers (DHEPs) on the pretext that the same has been ‘outsourced’ now to FHEPs.

What possible justification would UGC proffer to the question of producing Macaulayputras afresh under an avowedly ‘nationalist’ regime? Will these FHEPs be required to alter their curriculum and pedagogy to suit and serve the cause of promoting the Indian knowledge system? But if they do that, how would they be able to show that their courses and programmes are the same that they offer on their main campuses abroad?

The requirement of reservations in admission and appointment would, however, pose no problem as they are not applicable in the case of even the private DHEPs. Accreditation and ranking would also pose no difficulty as FHEPs would be governed by their own standards. The regulation seems susceptible to making these institutions new-age agraharas for those who can afford them.

Made to integrate the Indian knowledge system, they might not produce Macaulays, but Max Muellers. This may again endanger our rich repository of knowledge where it is claimed that the angrez (Europeans) took away our knowledge and that is how they could invent airplanes and vaccines. Many disciplines like Indology, Indian Philosophy, and classical languages could also be missing under the new dispensation and may thus constrain their nationalistic appeal to the masses as dreamt up by the ‘nationalist’ government.

The foreign universities may not be able to spare foreign faculty and may have to resort to local recruitment. Chances are that they would prefer the indigenous Macaulayputras. Given the guarantee of freedom in the appointment of faculty, it may be assumed that would be insulated from political and bureaucratic interference. The fetish for ‘white’ teachers and ‘white’ degrees does not go well with the Swadeshi plank of the present government. Are we going to be a vishwaguru with the help of Chomskys and Michael Apples? Shouldn’t India be imagining the locally born, bred and nurtured talents to become vishwaguru?

Students do attach value to degrees from a world-class university. Their decisions are seriously constrained by their access and affordability. But no one needs to worry on this count. India may be under compulsion to provide free food to over 62.5% of its population, but it has no dearth of dollar millionaires and billionaires who can afford such universities. But would they want to deny their offspring the cross-cultural experiences, global exposure, career prospects, income opportunities and possibilities of settling abroad?

Besides, a Harvard at Dantewada or Yale at Dharwad may not sound like an enviable proposition and these universities, if at all they come, may want to open their campuses only in the metropolitan cities. This would only create pockets of knowledge hubs in the country. It may also lead to the ‘quality’ shift of teachers from many Indian institutions who are stuck in remote areas. This may further aggravate the ‘Macaulayisation’ of Indian universities.

The pressure from the world political economy to open up social sectors like education and health for global players could undoubtedly be enormous. But India, with 5,000 years of history and tradition of knowledge institutions could have resisted the temptation.

The government could have shown faith in the abilities and capacities of Indian gurus and Indian higher education institutions to make India a vishwaguru. Alas! It has chosen the path of Vishuwagurudom via Macaulays.

(The writer teaches at the Central University of Himachal Pradesh)